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Deploying Azure Storage Discovery workspace in one of your Azure subscriptions is the first step in starting aggregation of storage account metrics. This article discusses the important decisions and best practices for a Storage Discovery deployment.
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## Select a subscription and region for Azure Storage Discovery workspace deployment
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Azure Storage Discovery workspace can be deployed in a subscription of your choice and in one of the supported regions as listed in [Regional coverage of Azure Storage Discovery](discovery-regionalCoverage.md).
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Azure Storage Discovery workspace can be deployed in a subscription of your choice and in one of the supported regions as listed in [Regional coverage of Azure Storage Discovery](regionalCoverage.md).
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Once created, a Discovery workspace can aggregate metrics from storage accounts within its "Scope", regardless of whether those accounts reside in different regions. The list of regions from which metrics are aggregated is also provided in the [Regional coverage of Azure Storage Discovery](discovery-regionalCoverage.md).
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Once created, a Discovery workspace can aggregate metrics from storage accounts within its "Scope", regardless of whether those accounts reside in different regions. The list of regions from which metrics are aggregated is also provided in the [Regional coverage of Azure Storage Discovery](regionalCoverage.md).
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## Permissions
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| Free | Small-scale deployments and evaluation | • Trends<br>• Distributions<br>• Top storage accounts | Not available | • Resource configuration | • Backfill: 15 days<br>• Retention: 15 days |
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| Standard | Production deployments with comprehensive insights | • Trends<br>• Distributions<br>• Top storage accounts | • Trends<br>• Distributions<br>• Top storage accounts | • Resource configuration<br>• Security configuration | • Backfill: 15 days<br>• Retention: 18 months |
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Refer [Storage Discovery Pricing page](discovery-pricing.md) for more details.
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Refer [Storage Discovery Pricing page](pricing.md) for more details.
<sup>1</sup> For information on regions covered, see [Storage Discovery Regions](discovery-regionalCoverage.md).
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<sup>2</sup> For information on Storage Discovery pricing plan, see [Understand Storage Discovery Pricing](discovery-pricing.md).
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<sup>1</sup> For information on regions covered, see [Storage Discovery Regions](regionalCoverage.md).
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<sup>2</sup> For information on Storage Discovery pricing plan, see [Understand Storage Discovery Pricing](pricing.md).
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### Define WorkspaceRoots
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WorkspaceRoots specifies the top-level Azure resource identifiers - such as subscriptions or resource groups - where Storage Discovery initiates its scan for storage accounts. These identifiers serve as the root of the discovery process, defining the overall scope and boundaries of your Azure estate that will be analyzed. Select the subscriptions and/or resource groups that need to be included in the workspace.
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> [!NOTE]
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> Please note that it will take upto 24 hours for the metrics to start appearing in the Reports after the scope has been created.
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## Next steps
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-[View insights on Storage Discovery Reports](discovery-reports.md)
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> Please note that it will take upto 24 hours for the metrics to start appearing in the Reports after the scope has been created.
title: Planning for an Azure Storage Discovery deployment
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description: Considerations and best-practices while deploying Azure Storage Discovery service
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author: pthippeswamy
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ms.service: azure-storage-mover
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ms.topic: overview
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ms.date: 08/01/2025
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ms.author: pthippeswamy
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---
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# Azure Storage Discovery: Regional Availability and Planning Guide
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Azure Storage Discovery empowers organizations to gain deep, actionable insights into their storage estate—across subscriptions, regions, and scopes. This article outlines the regional availability of Azure Storage Discovery, explains how to select regions for your workspace, and clarifies how regional aggregation of insights works.
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## Workspace Region Availability
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Azure Storage Discovery Workspaces (ASDW) are the foundational resource for configuring and visualizing your storage insights. During the preview phase, workspaces can be created in the following Azure regions:
The region where your ASDW is deployed determines where the control plane for your discovery experience resides. This includes:
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-**Data residency**: Metadata and insights are stored in the region where the workspace is created.
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-**Latency**: Choosing a region close to your operational base can improve dashboard responsiveness.
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-**Compliance**: Some organizations may have regulatory requirements that dictate where data must reside.
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### Planning Guidance
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When selecting a region for your workspace:
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-**Proximity**: Choose a region geographically close to your primary operations or data sources.
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-**Compliance**: Ensure the region aligns with your data residency and compliance policies.
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-**Preview Availability**: Confirm that the region is supported in the current release phase (e.g., private preview).
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## Regions for Storage Insights Aggregation
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While the workspace defines where your insights are processed and stored, the actual data being analyzed comes from storage accounts across multiple regions.
This means that even if your workspace is deployed in a limited set of regions, you can still gain visibility into storage accounts located in a broader set of Azure regions. The service collects and aggregates metrics such as:
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-**Capacity trends**
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-**Activity and transaction volumes**
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-**Configuration and security settings**
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-**Cost and consumption breakdowns**
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These insights are then visualized in your ASDW reports, enabling centralized monitoring of a globally distributed storage estate.
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## Best Practices for Regional Planning
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To maximize the value of Azure Storage Discovery:
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1.**Deploy your workspace in a supported region**: Ensure your chosen region is enabled for workspace creation.
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2.**Define scopes strategically**: Use tenant, subscription, or resource group levels to group storage accounts logically.
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3.**Use tags for filtering**: Apply Azure tags to storage accounts to selectively include them in your discovery scope.
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4.**Verify access**: Ensure users have Contributor access to the ASDW resource to view reports.
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5.**Allow time for data to populate**: Metrics typically begin appearing within 24 hours of scope configuration.
Azure Storage Discovery is currently in PREVIEW and is available in the select regions. Below is the list of regions where storage discovery workspaces can be created:
List of regions from which storage insights will be aggregated by Storage Discovery is as given below. This list is temporary and will change over time as Public Preview support continues to expand.
**Azure Storage Discovery** is a fully managed Azure service that provides deep, actionable insights into your object storage estate across subscriptions, regions, and resource groups. It is designed to simplify data management at scale by offering a unified, no-code experience for analyzing storage usage, activity, configuration, and security posture—all from a single pane of glass in the Azure portal.
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REVIEW Stephen/Fabian: NOT STARTED
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EDIT PASS: NOT STARTED
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With just a few clicks, users can answer critical questions such as:
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- How much data do I have across all my storage accounts?
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- Which regions or workloads are growing fastest?
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- Where can I reduce costs by adjusting access tiers or deleting stale data?
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- Are my storage configurations aligned with security and compliance best practices?
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Document score: not run
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## Azure Storage Discovery delivers value across multiple dimensions:
Gain organization-wide visibility into up to 1 million storage accounts. Discovery aggregates insights across subscriptions, resource groups, and regions, enabling users to monitor their entire storage footprint in one place.
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# What is Azure Storage Discovery?
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### Actionable Insights Without Engineering Overhead
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Out-of-the-box dashboards surface trends in capacity, transactions, errors, and configuration changes. Users can drill down into specific accounts or filter by tags, regions, or redundancy settings - without writing a single line of code or deploying infrastructure.
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Azure Storage Discovery provides a centralized view of storage across subscriptions and regions, aggregating metrics on capacity, activity, and configuration. Discovery Workspaces can be customized to track the storage growth and align with business needs, enabling users to drill into specific areas of storage and understand the changes effectively.
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### AI-Powered Exploration with Copilot
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Integrated with Azure Copilot, Discovery allows users to ask natural language questions like “Which storage accounts have the highest egress this month?” and receive visual, contextual answers powered by KQL behind the scenes.
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Multiple scopes can be created within each Discovery Workspace. Each scope can align with the business needs and can be defined per business unit or team to track the growth of storage estate overtime so that long term decisions can be taken
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### Security and Compliance Monitoring
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Visualize and audit storage configurations to ensure alignment with best practices. Identify accounts with settings that do not align with your business needs and take corrective action.
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## Capabilities of Discovery:
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### Visibility into the storage estate
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Users can understand their entire data estate, including capacity, transactions, compliance, and security. You can drill down into different parts of the data estate, derive insights.
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### Data Security and Compliance
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Monitoring the implementation of security and compliance modifications across various subscriptions and regions can be complex. Discovery dashboards help visualize storage configuration effortlessly.
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### Storage Cost Prediction and Optimization
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Discovery advances user’s understanding of storage costs by offering a detailed breakdown of expenses related to storage and transactions, categorized by each operation type at the individual storage account level.
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### Long-Term Trend Analysis
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With up to 18 months of historical data and automatic backfill of the previous month, Discovery supports long-term planning and workload optimization.
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### Seamless Integration and Scalability
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Discovery integrates with Azure Storage Center and other data management tools, offering a scalable solution that grows with your data estate.
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## Why It Matters
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As organizations scale their digital footprint, managing storage across thousands of accounts becomes increasingly complex. Azure Storage Discovery eliminates the need for custom scripts, fragmented dashboards, or manual audits. It empowers storage admins, architects, and governance leads to:
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- Make faster, data-driven decisions
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- Improve operational efficiency
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- Strengthen security posture
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## Key concepts
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### Scope
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A Scope in Azure Storage Discovery defines a logical grouping of storage accounts based on user-defined criteria such as resource tags. Scopes are nested within the boundaries defined by workspaceRoots and are used to filter and organize data for reporting and insights. Users have flexibility to define:
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A Scope in Azure Storage Discovery represents a logical grouping of storage accounts based on user-defined criteria, such as resource tags. Scopes are configured within the boundaries of a workspace and serve as filters to organize and segment data for reporting and insights. By defining scopes, users can tailor their workspace to align with specific business units, workloads, or any segment of their Azure Storage environment they wish to monitor. This enables more targeted visibility and actionable insights across distinct areas of the storage estate. Users have flexibility to define:
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- Scope without any ARM tags will include all storage accounts within the defined scope
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- Scope with tags enables users to selectively choose specific storage accounts based on Azure tags assigned to the storage accounts.
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The following articles can help you become familiar with the Storage Discovery service.
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-[Planning for an Azure Storage Discovery deployment](discovery-deployment-planning.md)
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-[Create Storage Discovery Workspace by using the Azure portal](discovery-create.md)
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-[Pricing and billing](discovery-pricing-billing.md)
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